July
The primary mission of the July 2010 delegation to Haiti was a fact-finding mission related to the lack of security and predominance of rape, sexual exploitation and other gender-based violence that have been reported throughout the temporary camps. To better assess the dire security situation, in late July through early August, the delegation met with representatives of the United Nations, the Haitian National Police, and Haitian women’s NGOS, including KOFAVIV and FAVILEK.
Within days upon returning from this mission, Jayne Fleming drafted a proposed resolution to the American Bar Association urging the federal government to increase its activity on behalf of Haiti’s women and children. The ABA passed the resolution unanimously (read more).
Additionally, ongoing efforts for Haiti relief have included:
- Enrolling 180 women in literacy classes. Additional funds are being sought to expand programs to include small business development and micro-finance.
- Funding for six safe houses for at risk women and children. Further funding is being sough for a large shelter that will accommodate up to ten families.
- Fundraising for a food program on behalf of more than 100 high-risk orphans between the ages of 10-17.
Team members traveling to Haiti in July-August 2010 included:
Jayne E. Fleming
Ms. Fleming has practiced in the area of human rights law for many years and leads the 50-member Human Rights team at Reed Smith. She has represented torture survivors and asylum seekers from every continent and has extensive experience working with traumatized children who have suffered violence, displacement and family separation. She has been engaged with human rights issues impacting women and children in Central America since 2006 and has traveled there eight times since then. In 2009, she led two community service trips to Guatemala to support women and children living in extreme poverty. In 2008, she participated in an art project to assist street youth in Honduras. She sits on the Executive Committee of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and the Board of Directors of Survivors International.
Ms. Musalo serves as the clinical professor of law and director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings. She has been at Hastings since 1997, following years of teaching, as well as lawyering in the non-profit world. She has written numerous articles on refugee law issues, with a focus on gender asylum, as well as religious persecution, and conscientious objection as bases for refugee status. Professor Musalo has contributed to the evolving jurisprudence of asylum law not only through her scholarship, but through her litigation of landmark cases. She was lead attorney in Matter of Kasinga (fear of female genital cutting as a basis of asylum), which continues to be cited as authority in gender asylum cases by tribunals from Canada to the United Kingdom to New Zealand. Her current work examines the linkage between human rights violations and migration, with a focus on the phenomenon of femicides in Guatemala, and its relation to requests for refugee protection from Guatemalan women.
Mr. Rubin is the Litigation Director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. A leading civil rights attorney for more than 28 years, he has successfully litigated more than 20 class actions in the area of immigrant and refugee rights. Mr. Rubin was co-lead counsel in the Prop. 187 class action that successfully challenged the threatened expulsion of undocumented children from California schools. He was also co-counsel in the litigation that forced the Clinton Administration to release hundreds of Haitian asylum seekers from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.